Wonders…
Archive for December, 2005
..and blogging from a cab at 5:30 a.m.
New Year’s has always been my favorite holiday. Zero religious meaning. Just out with the old, in with the new. A good time to take stock of things.
So, good luck with all that.
I’ll be on a beach in Florida.
Grand Central at holiday time (take that, Fox News).
God, and the little baby Jesus, bless New York.
So, I made it home in roughly two hours — tying or beating my time in the carpool.
Impressive. Or depressing.
Anyway, my favorite thing I saw on the way home, actually, was the above. That’s what greeted thousands of weary New Yorkers as they walked into and out of Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Mockery.
Traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge as of roughly 9:40.
Now I’m getting pissed.
..last-minute hitch-hiking.
This is about where I decided I was tired and would just take the subway.
..starting to detect a trend.
..Moondance diner, how your half-assed Spider Man-themed menus entice me!
Onward!
..is the only winner in the War on Christmas.
Well, Santa and the Jews.
…do you think is the difference between a crazy fantasy video and a sane one?
If only I had time.
But I must bravely blog on.
..still closed.
.. what people like about the Macy’s displays.
And I even like shiny things.
A lot.
Very nice.
5 minutes later — still closed.
That’s more like it!
I guess not so much.
It sounds hip at first, but it clearly doesn’t mean anything.
Yep.
Subways are still closed.
Bummer.
With the miracles of modern technology, I can blog the trip home on the last night of the strike.
My carpool luck ran out today, and I’m determined not to pay for a cab, so I’m joining my fellow NYers and hoofing it.
From 48th and Sixth Avenue…
Too bad about that.
I’m sorry.
Some days technology just makes me weep all over my tiny PDA keyboard.
I’m just a little choked up.
Well, if this works, I can now blog via Treo.
So, uh, how about that transit strike being over?
Here’s my column from today’s NY Post on the transit strike.
The important split here is less between rich and poor than it is between working-class and government-worker class:
New York City is in the middle of a class war — but not the one the Trans port Workers Union expected.
As transit workers walked off the job Tuesday and stayed off the job Wednesday, the rhetoric has heated up on all sides.
Nowhere did the rhetoric get hotter than on a Web site that the TWU set up for the strike. There, as the sun came up on Tuesday, hundreds of anonymous New Yorkers logged on and sounded off about the TWU’s decision to shut down the subways and buses.
The surprise (at least to the TWU): Opinions on the site ran roughly 4-to-1 against the union — which pulled the comments off the Web by Tuesday afternoon.
But the real surprise was who was against the union.
Check out a sampling of the outbursts (those, at least, suitable for printing in a family newspaper):
* "I appreciate many of your concerns regarding the contract negotiations, but striking, though [it] may prove a point, hurts more people than it helps," wrote one New Yorker. "My annual salary is less than half than the lowest paid transit worker in the system, and now I am going to lose at least one if not more days of pay due to the strike . . . Thanks for that — and happy holidays."
…
Not the reaction the TWU was hoping for.
And also not the war of rich against poor that the unions would like New Yorkers to believe is underway.
One socialist Web site on Tuesday labeled the strike "the biggest class confrontation in the U.S. in a generation" and wrote that "The attitude taken by the city’s ruling elite is akin to the reaction of a master to a slave revolt."
Not quite.
What I don’t get into in my column is what a big problem this is for the Democratic Party, which has become the party of government workers, as opposed to the party of all workers.
The shift has more than a little to do, I’d guess, with the GOP’s gains among working-class voters.
So, of course, we’re having our little fun here in New York City. The Transport Workers Union thinks it deserves a lot more money. The city (both the government and the people) think the union should go suck eggs.
So, what does the TWU do? It sets up a blog. Why not? Everyone has one.
But then, people post hundreds of comments to the TWU blog, telling the union to … go suck eggs.
The union then yanks down the comments. But someone thinking quicker than me archived the comments here.
I read at least 100 of these when they were up on the TWU site, so I can vouch that this is an accurate archive.
Pretty astounding. 6-1 or worse against the union. Pretty angry and bitter. A real class war … but not between rich and poor. More between working class and government-worker class.
No love lost.
Personal favorite: "I hope Roger Toussant gets syphilous and dies."
An illustrator I used to work with at The New York Sun, Graham Roumieu, has a new book out. It’s about Big Foot.
I haven’t read it yet, but The Onion’s AV Club writes it up here. And I can vouch for another of his books: "A Really Super Book About Squirrels."
Graham is one of the funniest folks I’ve ever come across and has an extremely offbeat sense of humor. Also, I’m pretty sure he illustrates drunk.
More Pew money to influence money in politics.
Aside from the usual issue of these reformers arrogantly assuming that their money is the only clean money in politics, Robert Bauer asks just what all of Pew’s money has bought. Pew claims its cash has bought increased esteem for the political process.
Bauer disagrees:
What is the evidence that public trust in the political process has
increased as a result of these reforms? There is none, because it has
not. Confidence in the nation’s leadership is very low; Members of
Congress, separated from soft money, rank well below all types of
leaders. … Public "participation" has not risen appreciably by any known or
accepted measure. There is no reason to believe that turnout levels
rise or fall with the tides of campaign finance reform; and turnout,
save for Presidential turnout in certain of the hotly contested states
in 2004, remains weak in federal, state and local elections.
Right, as always.
An airing of grievances against the GOP.
So, I guess my book will be a perfect festivus gift next December. Or a perfect belated festivus gift after the first of the year in 2007.
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